


The Old Fashioned Way

by Kymopoleia



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Akumanette AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-05 22:30:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5392670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kymopoleia/pseuds/Kymopoleia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marinette and Tikki get into a fight and Marinette doesn't take it well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Old Fashioned Way

Marinette rubbed the tears from her eyes angrily, heart feeling hollow. Tikki was gone, too upset with her to stick around. She’d even taken the miraculous, little arms carrying the earring away. Her fists were clenched tightly. She knew she’d messed up, but that didn’t mean Tikki had to… to punish her like this.

Her eyes snap up as a glowing mask appears before her eyes, her purse pulsing with power and spreading the sensation through her. It’s odd, so different from how Tikki and the miraculous work. Where usually she feels pure and energized, she now feels a venomous anger like the polluted, choppy waters of the Seine on a bad day.

“Ladybug, I can give you your powers back, for a small price." A familiar voice sounds.

“What price is that, Master?” She replies, lips forming the words before she’s had time to process the offer.

“Chat Noir’s miraculous.”

“Deal.” She opens her hand and a pure black yoyo falls into it. Her eyes study it for a second, but she closes her fingers around it anyways. “But be warned, I may come for you once I have his. You’ve hurt too many of my friends to escape me.”

“I will wait for when you arrive.” With that, the mask disappears, and Marinette stands. She feels the oily bubbles cover her skin, but when she looks down at herself she doesn’t have the kind of outfit she normally sees on akuma. It’s her outfit from earlier, just darker. She goes up to her balcony and heads for the school. It would be just her luck that the one time her mask isn’t donned is when she’s trying to take back her partner- former partner. She could only be his partner so long as she had her miraculous, and Tikki had left her without it.

The trip from her home to her school is uneventful, her yoyo going down and back up in her hand as she walks. She doesn’t live far, but the streets are sluggish in the midafternoon heat. Marinette is content to walk, a slow menacing force of oily chill slipping down the streets of her home to find and destroy that little kitten.

When she finally stands in front of the school her eyes narrow and train on the doors and Hawkmoth flickers the mask back on again.

“Why are you hesitating? You’ve seen what happens to akuma who keep me waiting.” His tone comes off vitriolic at her pace.

“Oh, so you want me to come and destroy you sooner?” She winds the yoyo up and sends it slamming into the center of the school steps, the rolling cloud of debris scattering instantaneously. “Be careful what you wish for.”

There are screams from all around as the thunderous cacophony rumbles to a close. The crater surrounds her nearly-glowing yoyo, the massive chunks of marble curling it like a bed of crushed flowers. Marinette feels a rush of power as she tugs the yoyo back into her hands, eyes widened in glee at the things she had broken. Broken, what a strange word. As a miraculous-holder fighting akuma, the word had meant failure. Now, as an akuma- and that’s a thought she had never thought would come into her airspace- the word meant she was doing something right.

There isn’t much of a wait before there are students- her classmates, she has to remind herself- come tumbling down the steps, framing her artwork like a class photo around a trophy. There are shocked screams at the destruction and then, when they look up at the only person left on the street, eyes on her.

It isn’t their first time encountering an akuma. It isn’t even their first time in danger. But, for some reason, they still stand in that cluster, eyes on her like a pig looking up at its slaughterer.

Through the oily power oozing through her, Marinette realizes that she can’t focus on any individual person for too long. None of them are wearing the mask she wants, none of them are purring and coming up to her, begging for attention. None of them are what she needs.

“Chat Noir!” She calls. “Show yourself.”

There’s a nervous shifting in the crowd before someone stumbles out onto the sidewalk. There’s a shock of brown-to-red hair and concerned eyes trained on her, and a pleading voice escaping pale pink lips.

“Marinette! Stop!” The familiar voice calls. “What are you doing?”

A tall boy in a red jacket barely manages to pull her out of the way before Marinette’s yoyo slices through the air where her eyes would have been.

Marinette immediately ignores the scared screams and fearful shuffling for the doors to the school. She steps forwards, the sidewalk cracking ominously under her foot. “Come out and fight me, you cowardly cat!” She yells. “Your lady is calling!”

There’s a soft purr from behind her. “You don’t look like my lady, purr-incess.”

Marinette clenches the fist not holding her yoyo as she turns on her heel, mouth twisting into a smirk.

“You don’t recognize me?” She starts swinging her yoyo, and easily catches his wrist with the string of it as he reaches out to claw at her. “It’s never been this easy to catch you before, kitten.”

He stares at her in shock as she plucks his ring off, his transformation draining before her very eyes. The funny thing, though, is that she can’t focus on him enough to care who he is. She doesn’t see anything more than the fear in his eyes as she slips his miraculous on, admiring how it looked on her oily skin.

Marinette tugs her yoyo back, watching his wrist fall. The entire encounter had lasted only a few seconds.

“I won. I beat you, even without the miraculous.” She smiles. “I can do… I can do anything!” She clenches the fist wearing the ring, feeling the added power but not needing to tap into it. She had it, it was leverage over Hawkmoth.

She’d kill him the old fashioned way.

**Author's Note:**

> this is the first thing i've written for this fandom i feel so late to the party i'm  
> take the akumanette au  
> take it


End file.
